Grand Theft Auto III

"Grand Theft Auto III Is The Definition Of Crime Simulator"

Respect is everything

Grand Theft Auto III is probably the best game ever made. It is the next installment in the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series after GTA2 on the PlayStation and PC. The GTA series has developed a cult following over the years with many die-hard fans. As of the time I write this review, GTA3 has sold over 7,000,000 copies and has caused GTA and GTA2 sales to skyrocket.

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is the best part of the game. If you played the PSX GTA games, the first thing you will notice is how the camera preset isn’t the birds-eye view, but don’t worry, there are several camera options and the traditional birds-eye view is one of them. The controls are rather simple and easy to learn. The Grand Theft Auto series is all about freedom in gameplay. This isn’t really a mission-based game. If you want, you could go on killing sprees, do missions, or just drive around and see the crime-infested streets of Liberty City. Why did I say crime-infested you ask? Well, you aren’t the only criminal in Liberty City though. At times, you will see crooks mugging people or stealing cars and sometimes even yours so watch out for them.

There are 3 islands that make up Liberty City and they are Portland, Staunton Island, and Shoreside Vale. You start off in Portland and you have to do missions to get the other 2 islands. The islands look great. Portland is the industrial part of Liberty City and has things like docks for ships, factories, and lots of businesses. Staunton Island is the part of the city that you could refer to as the central business district and it has loads of skyscrapers. This is the part of the city that resembles Time Square in New York City. Shoreside Vale is suburban part of Liberty City. All of the parts of the city are very diverse between one another. The city is overall huge. It can take a while to memorize it all but once you do, that is when the real fun begins. The city takes a life of its own at times. It seems so alive that it is unbelieveable.

There are many guns such as the M-16, Uzi (you can do a drive-by with the Uzi), Pistol, Flamethrower, Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Molotov Cocktails, Baseball Bats, your own fists and feet, AK-47, and many more things at your disposal. When using some guns, you have to use a auto targeting system which can be rather annoying since you are trying to kill a criminal that is beating you up or gunning you while the auto targeting only wants to aim at the old lady walking down the street. That is really the only flaw to the game.

There are icons hidden around the city such as the health icon, body armor icon, adrenaline pill icon, and the hidden packages, which I will explain in the replayability section. To gain weapons, you can also look for weapon pick-ups that are hidden around the city.

There are loads of vehicles in the game ranging from Volvo looks-alikes to Lamborghini, Ferrari, and Porsche look-alikes. There is even a tank! One bad thing is that they couldn't license the names of the cars, but I guess a car manufacturer wouldn't want to see their pride and joy being mangled and blown up every 10 seconds anyway.

As you cause chaos in Liberty City, the cops will chase you according to the amount of chaos you cause. It is based on a star-level thing. One star will cause just any officer that sees you to chase you a little while. Two stars causes a little more cops to chase you than the one star level. Three stars causes all available cops to chase you and cop cars are now equipped with 2 policemen per car. Four stars causes SWAT teams to come after you in Securicar’s, which is GTA3’s equivalent to a SWAT team van. Five stars cause the FBI to come after you in unmarked FBI cars. And the highest level of them all, six stars, causes the Army to come after you in their big Army trucks and even Tanks that will easily make you explode.

The game is so fun. How could you not like causing senseless chaos?! The gameplay is great and it was a real accomplishment by those boys and girls over at Rockstar Games and Rockstar North. Kudos to them.

STORY
You are a nameless, smalltime thug. You get landed in jail from a robbery gone wrong. You are making a bank robbery with a girlfriend, Catalina, and another man when they turn on you. They shoot you in the alleyway and leave you for dead or for the cops, whichever comes first. The story starts where you escape from prison but it wasn’t planned. A gang of Yakuzas had a plan to get their dojo out of jail. When the dojo, you, and another inmate are being transported from Staunton Island to Portland, they stop the Securicar and police cars. After they massacre all the cops around, they get their dojo and leave. Now you and a fellow inmate, 8-ball, escape the scene of the crime. 8-ball has connections in the Italian Mafia who resides in Portland. From there on, you work for various bosses and then you eventually crawl your way to the top of Liberty City no matter who you have to step on to get there.

GRAPHICS AND AUDIO
If you have played the previous GTA games on the PSX, you will immediately notice how it isn’t 2D but now 3D, which is awesome. The graphics are good but they aren’t great. The people look kind of blocky. Cars look good too with good damage effects. Sometimes, cars and people will “disappear” after looking a different direction then looking back to where they were which is extremely annoying. Well explosions and flames look great. Water in the game looks really fake and awfully dark.

The sound is great. The guns sound pretty realistic and so do the explosions. The cars sound great with things like horns, crashes, and the engines. There are also radios in the cars that you can tune as you please. There are several stations that feature a wide variety of music genres such as rock, pop, old music, rap, reggae, opera (you can’t have a crime simulator without opera), and even a talk radio station. The best sound of them all has to be the screams the pedestrians make as you make chaos though. How can you resist the sound of guns blasting, cars revving, explosions, and pedestrians screaming for mercy?

REPLAYABILITY
There is lots of replayability. The concept of GTA3 is freedom and you have the freedom to do anything you please, except for swim which will cause you instant death. There are side-missions in the game like vigilante missions where you chase criminals, paramedic missions where you pick up dieing people on the streets and bring them to the hospital, taxi missions where you drive people places, and firefighting missions where you put out car fires. There are lots of hidden packages around Liberty City, which will give you certain things according to the amount of them you collect. I bought GTA3 back in December 2001 and it didn’t start getting old until around October 2002, which is around the release of GTA Vice City I should say, and I played GTA3 nonstop. That is how good it is.

TO BUY OR TO RENT?!
Buy this game. You will not regret it. You will be so happy I told you to buy it, that you would send me e-mails thanking me. Trust me, this is the best game ever made. Boys and girls, we are in the prescence of greatness for Grand Theft Auto III is an instant classic and shall never be forgotten for ages to come.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/22/02, Updated 01/20/03